TORONTO-One man is dead and a woman hospitalised with life-threatening injuries after a shooting Saturday night at Toronto's Caribbean Festival, the event formerly known as Caribana.Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was called in to probe the shooting in which both victims sustained multiple gunshot wounds.The SIU said Toronto police officers responded to a "report of a disturbance" involving three men along the Caribbean Festival's parade route Saturday night, where reports say there were more than one million revellers.In a release the SIU said that "officers interacted with the men and shots were fired."One witness said he heard what sounded like six gunshots just after the parade ended.
"People started screaming," said Kosho Sato, who brought his three children down to the parade."People were screaming and running away."A YouTube video Sato captured just after the shooting shows a man, legs twisted, lying in the street surrounded by police and emergency workers trying to revive him.A woman standing on the edge of the police line starts crying and has to be held up."That's my brother," she tells a police officer.A 30-year-old man was taken by ambulance to Toronto's St Michael's Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
The 22-year-old woman who was also shot was fighting for her life in hospital Saturday night, said Connie Christie, Emergency Medical Services deputy commander.The SIU said Sunday the woman was in surgery at St Michael's Hospital.An 18-year-old bystander was taken to Toronto General Hospital after a bullet grazed his eyebrow."I'm not exactly sure if the man shot the woman," said Christie. "I don't know the exact circumstances."Toronto police wouldn't comment on the shooting, saying the matter has been handed over to the SIU.
The SIU, which investigates incidents involving police that result in death, injury, or serious sexual assault, has nine investigators probing the shooting.SIU spokesman Frank Phillips declined to comment on reports that one man had a handgun.He said investigators had spoken with at least 14 eyewitnesses, but the magnitude of the crowd suggests more people saw what happened.The name of the deceased man was not released Sunday morning pending notification of next of kin.The Caribbean Festival is the largest festival of its kind in North America, but it is not immune to violence.
In 2009, two men visiting Toronto for the festival were shot, one fatally, in what police at the time described as a targeted attack.In 2005, a man was killed when shots were fired into a public square crowded with festival revellers.Four men were shot in 2003, and one killed in a 1996 shooting during the festival."Historically there are quite often incidents of violence at Caribana so we're always on guard for anything," said Christie. "You never know what's going to happen anywhere. That's just the way society has gone."